House Democrats shift focus to Trump corruption -- Sept. 19, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The drive to impeach President Donald Trump is taking a turn. It’s emoluments time.

The House Judiciary Committee plans to meet Monday to investigate “Presidential Corruption: Emoluments and Profiting off the Presidency.”

This new tack comes with risk. Despite spending five months parsing special counsel Robert Mueller’s report about Russian influence in the 2016 campaign, House Democrats have not made their case for Trump’s impeachment to the public.

Only 37 percent of voters want Congress to begin impeachment proceedings, a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday found. Half of voters were opposed and 12 percent undecided.

Support is highest among the Democratic base but weak among independent voters, who the Democratic presidential nominee will need in 2020.   

House Democrats who back impeachment believe exposing Trump’s self-dealing – using his office for personal gain -- will gin up enough public support so lawmakers in districts Trump won will vote for impeachment.

Air Force flight crews have stayed at Turnberry, Trump’s resort in Scotland, on stopovers from the United States to the Middle East. Vice President Mike Pence stayed at Doonbeg, Trump’s resort in Ireland, even though it was across the country from his meetings in Dublin.

Trump touted his Doral golf resort in Miami for next year’s meeting of the Group of Seven world leaders.

“The public is starting to get the point that he’s been running the White House as a money-making operation for himself and his family,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Judiciary Committee, told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

Trump’s presidency has introduced Americans to the Constitution’s three anti-corruption measures, the Emoluments Clauses.

The Framers used emolument to mean a benefit, gain, profit or advantage. At that time, foreign governments often gave lavish tokens of appreciation and friendship to diplomats, and the Framers wanted to limit foreign influence.

The Foreign Emoluments Clause in Article 1, Section 9 prohibits any person holding an “Office of Profit or Trust” from accepting “without the Consent of the Congress. . . any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind, whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

The two other Emolument Clauses concern domestic issues.    

There’s significant debate among legal scholars about what constitutes an emolument and whether elected officials, including the president, are covered by the clause, the Congressional Research Service said in a report last month.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has presumed the president is covered, and courts have come to the same conclusion, the report said. But there have been no definitive court decisions.

When President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he donated the $1.4 million prize money to charity.

Trump refused to put his business holdings in a blind trust, as presidents for the last 40 years have done. He set up a trust run by his sons and a Trump organization executive and said he wouldn’t talk business with his family.

Trump also said he would not profit from foreign governments that use his hotels. He has donated about $351,000 to the U.S. Treasury to cover the profits, but as he has neither disclosed his record-keeping nor how he calculated the amount, Democrats say the figure is much too low.

Three major lawsuits claiming Trump violated the Emoluments Clauses are bouncing around federal courts, but the pace of justice is slow. Trump claims he is losing money as president, largely because of his legal bills to defend himself in the lawsuits.

“It’s probably costing me from $3 to $5 billion for the privilege of being – and I couldn’t care less – I don’t care. You know if you’re wealthy, it doesn’t matter,” he said last month.  

Again, Trump refuses to provide any documentation to back up his claims.

He also complained nobody investigated Obama’s lucrative book deal.  The former president and first lady Michelle Obama signed a joint book deal for $65 million in 2017 – after he left office.

“I got sued on a thing called ‘emoluments,’” Trump said.

Trump created his problems for himself by refusing to follow established presidential norms like blind trusts and disclosure of tax returns. Democrats smell smoke, but they must find the fire to make the case.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Shutdown weighs on Trump -- Jan. 24, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won the battle over the State of the Union.

President Donald Trump acceded to Pelosi’s decision to postpone the address until the federal government reopens.

“This is her prerogative,” he tweeted late Wednesday night, reversing course.

Hours earlier he’d said he was looking for another venue after Pelosi said he couldn’t make the speech in the House chamber as long as the government is partially shut down. Then he changed his mind.

“There is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House Chamber,” he tweeted.

He’s right. Trump can draw a crowd of enthusiastic supporters wearing red MAGA hats to an arena anytime. But the State of the Union address is one of the rare occasions all three branches of government and the diplomatic corps gather in one august room as a captive audience while TV cameras roll.

Trump could have avoided all the drama had he agreed with Pelosi the speech was a bad idea while a quarter of the government was closed. She cited security concerns, but the administration insisted there was no problem with security.

Instead, he tried to bully her, saying he would deliver the speech despite her request to postpone. She then refused to allow the House to vote for the resolution authorizing a joint session of Congress.

And so the president who hates to be seen as weak looked weak. Three new polls, including one by his favorite network, Fox News, show his job performance ratings are slipping.

Fox found only 43 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing overall, down 3 points from December. He is also under water on border security, immigration and foreign policy, Fox reported. 

“TRUMP BLINKS” Fox blared in a headline on its website as conservative commentators criticized his State of the Union turnabout.    

“Bad decision,” Laura Ingraham of Fox News said. She said she’d give three State of the Union speeches around the country. 

But the real question is not where Trump will give the State of the Union address but when.

Presidents use the prime-time address to lay out their legislative priorities for the coming year. By postponing, Trump all but announced his agenda is going nowhere in Congress during the shutdown and perhaps after that.

Thus Trump is learning even the president has limitations in a country with three equal branches of government. Republican congressional leaders have been afraid to stand up to him, but the Democratic-controlled House has a speaker who’s keen to use her power.

Meanwhile, the country is enduring the longest federal government shutdown in history with more than 800,000 federal workers going without pay because the president has refused to compromise on his demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall.

Democrats refuse to meet his demand, contending that, if they give in now, Trump will use the shutdown threat to force passage of future initiatives. Democrats  floated the idea of $5.7 billion for enhanced border security – just not for a physical wall, which they see as ineffective.

Trump’s attempt to bring Democrats to the table failed because he offered only a temporary fix for the young people called Dreamers who came to the country as children – and no compromise on wall funding.

So far, Democrats appear to be winning the shutdown battle.

Pelosi got a higher rating for her handling of negotiations for the shutdown than Trump in a CBS News poll, which found 47 percent approve of Pelosi and 35 percent of Trump.

Republicans and Democrats each want their leaders to keep fighting, which explains the current congressional gridlock. Lawmakers are unlikely to budge unless they feel political pain.

But it’s the independents who often determine elections, and 60 percent of independents disapprove of Trump’s job performance, the highest share among those voters since Trump took office, the Politico/Morning Consult poll reported.

Is a border wall worth the shutdown? CBS asked. A whopping 71 percent of independents said no. For Trump and Senate Republicans, that’s an ominous number looking to 2020.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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